Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus

Laurentius Nicolai with the nickname Norvegus (actually Laurids Nielsen or Nilssøn ; * approx. 1540 in Oslo , † May 5, 1622 in Vilnius , Lithuania ) was a Norwegian Jesuit priest . Because of his involvement in the unsuccessful Counter-Reformation in Sweden, he is mainly known in the Scandinavian countries under the name "Klosterlasse".

Life

Nicolai, according to uncertain information, a brother of the future Lutheran bishop of Oslo Jens Nilssøn , was educated at the cathedral schools in Oslo and Copenhagen and went on a study trip in 1558, initially to Amsterdam . In 1559 he enrolled at the University of Leuven , where he converted to the Roman Catholic Church . After the master's examination in 1561, he continued to study, joined in 1564 the Jesuit Order and was in 1565 for ordained priests . As a colleague of Robert Bellarmin , he taught in the religious seminary, but had been trying to send a missionary to Scandinavia since 1571.

The opportunity arose in 1575 when King John III. of Sweden, who had been reshaping the Lutheran Church in a humanistic-reform-Catholic sense for a long time and was looking for an opening towards Rome. Nicolai traveled to Braunsberg in the fall of 1575 and came to Stockholm in April 1576 with a papal mandate , where he was supposed to be the confessor of the Catholic Queen Katharina Jagiellonica , but initially did not make public that he was Catholic at the king's request. Johann III. appointed him rector of a newly founded theological college, the Collegium regium Stockholmense , which was housed in the former Franciscan monastery on the island of Riddarholmen . There Nicolai influenced the students in the Roman Catholic sense, but without making this apparent. The resistance of the Lutheran-Orthodox Rector of the Stockholm City School, Abraham Angermannus , only led to the fact that he was deposed and the city school was also incorporated into the college. In 1577 Nicolai won six converts who were sent to the Collegium Germanicum in Rome for further training , and more were added in the following years. From 1578 he and other teachers recruited to support him appeared more and more clearly as Catholics, so that the Lutheran Archbishop Laurentius Petri Gothus turned sharply against Nicolai, which led to public hostility. The king stuck to Nicolai, who supported him in his endeavors to enforce the controversial Agende ( Röda Boken ) and church order ( Nova Ordinantia ), and advocated against Rome, the royal desire to preserve certain Reformation achievements such as the worship service in the Popular language and the abolition of celibacy . However, the papal legate Antonio Possevino , who led the union talks, refused, so that the king broke off the talks in the summer of 1580 and expelled the Jesuits from Sweden.

Nicolai had already been deposed in May 1580 after there had been a popular riot against the monastery. At first he stayed in the country, but had to leave Sweden before the end of the year and traveled to Rome to report. At Possevino's instigation, he was initially not allowed to return to Braunsberg, where most of the converts he had won were trained at the Lyceum Hosianum . In 1581 he taught at the Jesuit College in Vienna , from 1582 at the Jesuit College in Olomouc and from 1585 at the Clementinum in Prague , where he was awarded a Dr. theol. received his doctorate. Further stations were the Jesuit college in Graz (1589–1598) and again in Vienna. Only in 1600 he could at the instigation of Johann III. Son, the Polish King Sigismund III. Wasa to return to Braunsberg and resume the attempts at missionary work in Scandinavia. His Confessio Christiana de via Domini , an apologetic representation of the Catholic faith, which was printed in Latin in 1604 and in Danish translation in 1605, was used first. In 1606 he went on a trip to Denmark to win King Christian IV for Catholicism, but was expelled again immediately. Since 1610 teacher and pastor at the Jesuit seminary in Riga , he had to leave the city after it was conquered by Gustav II Adolf in 1621.

Fonts (newer editions)

• Examen confessionis fidei synodi Upsalensis in regno Sueciae anno Domini 1593 celibratae . Edited by Olof Kolsrud. Oslo 1965.
• Epistolarum commercium: aliaque quaedam scripta de manu eius . Edited by Johannes J. Duin, Oskar Garstein. St Olav Forlag, Oslo 1980

literature

• Andreas Brandrud: Klosterlasse: et bidrag til the Jesuitic propagandas historie in the north . 1895.
• Vello Helk : Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus SJ En biografi med bidrag til belysning af romerkirkens forsøg på at genvinde Danmark-Norge i tiden fra reformationen til 1622 . GEC Gads Forlag, Copenhagen 1966.
• Olle Hellström: Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus . In: Svenskt biografiskt lexikon , Volume 22, 1977-1979, p. 363 ff. ( Riksarkivet.se ).
• Oskar Garstein: Monastery class: Stormfuglen Som Ville Gjenerobre north for Katolisisms . Aschehoug, Oslo 1998, ISBN 82-03-17984-3
• Jacek Maciej Krawczyk: Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus: jego zycie i zwiazki z Polska . 2000
• Georg Johannesen: Eksil: om Klosterlasse og other eksempler . Cappelen, Oslo 2005
• Ingun Montgomery: Laurentius Norvegus . In: Robert Benedetto, James O. Duke (Eds.): The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History: The Early, Medieval, and Reformation Eras . Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, p. 483
• Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 12 : Münch – Peirup . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1898, p. 251 (Danish, runeberg.org ).

Web links

• Item in Den Store Danske
• Items. In: Store Norske Leksikon

Individual evidence

1. ↑ So Olle Hellström in the article in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon and A. Chr. Bang in the article in Dansk biografisk lexikon ; according to other information, e.g. B. the article in the store norske leksikon , 1538 in Tønsberg